It was Seat that unveiled the design study called el-Born at the last year’s Geneva show, but the production car announced today has a Cupra badge on it.
The newcomer utilizes the same chassis as the Volkswagen ID.3 electric hatchback, improving upon it with aggressive looks, company’s signature copper-tinted accents, sport seats, and a new steering wheel.
The battery comes rated at 82 kilowatt-hours of nominal capacity (77 kWh useful capacity) and is reportedly enough for 500 kilometers (310 miles) of WLTP-rated range. To put things into perspective, only the top spec of the VW ID.3 gets this battery size, while cheaper specs make do with 45 and 58 kWh. The concept car from last year also had a smaller battery (62 kWh) and less range (420 km / 280 mi).
On the technical side of things, the el-Born features a system called Dynamic Chassis Control Sport (DCC Sport) which fine-tunes the suspension on the go. Other than that, Cupra only mentions that the car hits 50 km/h (31 mph) in 2.9 seconds. All other specs remain to be announced. For the record, the prototype hit 100 km/h in 7.5 seconds and supported fast charging for 260 km (161 miles) of extra range after 30 minutes spent connected to a high-power outlet.
The car will enter production at the VW factory in Zwickau, Germany, and hit the showrooms next year.